thelinuxlink.net

I usually love LXer.com, but why is it they and other open source news sites link to people who are basically trolls like Dvorak. Rob Enderle is one of those. I'm wary of linking to his site and creating traffic to it, though you can find some of his articles at LXer if you really want to. He's become one of those like Dvorak that I personally try to avoid.

In the interest of not generating traffic to the site, here's a quote from his article:

At the core of open source is the belief that mysterious others assure the quality of an open source product. However, few actually have the skills required to do such a review. If, in the case of an open source encyclopedia -- where there should be a lot of experts -- you still can't trust the content, the people or the quality, then how can you trust that open source works where such a review is less likely?

Now, you certainly can test the product -- just like you do any other -- but that is what you would do with a proprietary product as well. It challenges the underlying principle that you can trust an open source effort to be self-policing.

I think this reminds us that just because we want something to be true -- whether it is believing in your favorite politician, company or relative -- that doesn't make it true. With open source, as with any complex product, if you aren't doing the quality control yourself, or if it isn't being done by a real person you know will do it, then you are a fool to presume the quality is where you need it to be.

These Wikipedia examples showcase that open source in and of itself does not assure quality, and they do so in a way that even someone who can't read code can understand.

Now, aside from the fact that everything he said applies even more so to closed source applications where your trust in "others" is total, it's obvious to all of us how preposterous is it to compare Wikipedia to open source. Open source isn't about letting anyone put their code in; most projects have a benevolent dictator or other system for controlling what patches are allowed in. After all, the linux kernel is pretty well known for being a bitch about making you get your code up to snuff so that it can be added.

So, is there any way to convince these news aggregator sites to avoid this sort of trollish attention-grabbing crap? I feel like an idiot already for allowing myself to actually click on the link and read his drivel, and wish I didn't let emotion take over in that second or two between reading a stupid headline and clicking the link. I'll be avoiding Rob's articles in the future, mark my words, but I don't just want to avoid articles critical of linux, only those that are completely without merit.

Don't feed the trolls. The best way to get rid of them is to ignore them. Eventually they'll get a clue that nobody cares what they have to say.

Vogateer wrote:Now, aside from the fact that everything he said applies even more so to closed source applications where your trust in "others" is total, it's obvious to all of us how preposterous is it to compare Wikipedia to open source. Open source isn't about letting anyone put their code in; most projects have a benevolent dictator or other system for controlling what patches are allowed in. After all, the linux kernel is pretty well known for being a bitch about making you get your code up to snuff so that it can be added.

Open Source is all about letting anyone put their code in. It does not have to be accepted by the project, but they can contribute the code. And if it is not accepted you can fork a project to your tastes as long as you follow the license.

I'm just surprised that MS or another large company has not taken the kernel code and created a sub par fork. They could then promote it as 'MS Linux' and it would be adopted fairly readily by big business. It could give good functionality yet sub-par to Windows. Then big business could say 'See we tried with MS' Linux and it doesn't work. If they can't do it right no one can'.

Vogateer wrote:So, is there any way to convince these news aggregator sites to avoid this sort of trollish attention-grabbing crap? I feel like an idiot already for allowing myself to actually click on the link and read his drivel, and wish I didn't let emotion take over in that second or two between reading a stupid headline and clicking the link. I'll be avoiding Rob's articles in the future, mark my words, but I don't just want to avoid articles critical of linux, only those that are completely without merit.

The issue is that these are the articles that are going around. Ignoring them and not responding to the issues does not mean they are not there.

chuck wrote: I'm just surprised that MS or another large company has not taken the kernel code and created a sub par fork. They could then promote it as 'MS Linux' and it would be adopted fairly readily by big business. It could give good functionality yet sub-par to Windows. Then big business could say 'See we tried with MS' Linux and it doesn't work. If they can't do it right no one can'.

I am surprised MS don't use one of the BSD's because they do not have to contribute a line back, at least that way they would have a fine Base Os to play with.
As much as i do not advocate mac osx , i do commend them for using the BSD vitamins, i would much rather know that consumers are using a sound os foundation than the shit that is mixed at redmond, hence the BSD license allows this.

chuck wrote: Open Source is all about letting anyone put their code in. It does not have to be accepted by the project, but they can contribute the code. And if it is not accepted you can fork a project to your tastes as long as you follow the license.

No. Open source is about the users' freedom and control, not about them getting their code into the project. Yes, you're allowed to offer code and suggestions, but wholly unlike Wikipedia, it is not accepted blindly. I've yet to see a major open source project simply open up and allow anyone to put code into their main branch without someone else approving it. On Wikipedia, the largest complaint is that there is no quality control before something is posted. Everything is accepted, even if it's preposterous, though to be fair to Wikipedia, they correct things very quickly. Major open source projects tend to have a benevolent dictator or a very small team at the head of it, a far cry from the way Wikipedia is run.

I've yet to see a major open source project where anyone's code is accepted first, then only cut out later if it's bad. This is a huge difference, and makes the comparison of Wikipedia to open source software trollish and attention grabbing.

chuck wrote:

Vogateer wrote:So, is there any way to convince these news aggregator sites to avoid this sort of trollish attention-grabbing crap? I feel like an idiot already for allowing myself to actually click on the link and read his drivel, and wish I didn't let emotion take over in that second or two between reading a stupid headline and clicking the link. I'll be avoiding Rob's articles in the future, mark my words, but I don't just want to avoid articles critical of linux, only those that are completely without merit.

The issue is that these are the articles that are going around. Ignoring them and not responding to the issues does not mean they are not there.

My point was that in this article there is no legitimate point or issue to respond to. The only novel bit was the trollish comparison to Wikipedia, and ignoring trolls is exactly what you should do, but here LXer is promoting them by giving them the same treatment as legitimate, useful articles. If the Wikipedia comparison had been reasonable and made sense, I would have read it and taken it in as something to keep in mind, a problem that we as a community should look into.

But without the Wikipedia comment, his part about open source would basically be summed up as "You shouldn't trust something simply because it's open source." That's hardly a newsflash, and has been stated countless times before. Trust in open source projects is usually based on a good track record and transparency, which works pretty well, even for those of us who can't read the code.

I mind that the only bit of the article that hasn't been repeated a thousand times was a horribly inapt analogy to Wikipedia, which was in the headline. People who don't know about open source software but have read about or heard criticisms of Wikipedia might read this article, since it's from a linux feed after all, and get the impression that open source projects are run in an anarchical manner, and that any Tom, Dick, and Harry can disrupt things as they do on Wikipedia from time to time.

It depends on what you want LXer to be, and some people may want to be directed to such useless articles simply to know they exist, but in this case there's not even a good way to respond to the article so that you can point out its faults. (The comment requires registration and is on a separate page, so very few will see any response) There's plenty of trollish crap out there, and I'm sure it could easily overwhelm the useful, meaningful stuff out there if you let it. I simply want a feed that directs me to good articles, both critical and positive, that tell me more about new developments in the world of Linux, and this article was junk that wasted my time.